Faculty Development

Faculty development is a critical component to any successful blended learning initiative. Faculty must be supported by being provided the tools for success. By engaging in a meaningful training experience, either self-paced or as part of a facilitated cohort, faculty should have the opportunity to expand their knowledge of the nuances of designing and delivering blended learning.

This Toolkit offers any faculty member the opportunity to participate in a self-paced online training program. Institutions who are part of the UCF/AASCU NGLC Wave 1 grant also participated in cohort-based training facilitated by expert faculty.

Composition Teacher Training Course

Facilitators:

Access:

Training for the composition course will be facilitated through Blackboard’s CourseSites (https://www.coursesites.com) by Elizabeth Wardle.

Upon request, Elizabeth will send you an invitation to join the course. All you have to do is accept the invitation and the follow the instructions. Once you are logged in, you will be able to access the full training site. Just in case, here are instructions for New Students:

After selecting the link in the e-mail invitation, click I Need A New Account button.

Enter all the information requested on the New Instructor page and click the Sign Up button at the bottom. User name and the Course Sites URL fields do not accept special characters.

Below Institution/District, there is a Captcha box. You need to type the characters you see into the field.

Select the Accept radio button. The button just confirms you accept the CourseSites terms of use.

Click the Sign Up button at the bottom of the page.

You will be redirected to the home page for the Composition Teacher Training course.

Beware: A lot of e-mail systems are dropping the CourseSites invitation into the spam folder. If you do not receive an e-mail from CourseSites, check your spam folder.

If you have any trouble signing up, please contact the CourseSites Help Desk. They are extremely helpful and should be able to get you signed up pretty quickly. You can find CourseSites help at:

If that doesn’t work, let Elizabeth know and she will do her best to help you.

Most of the reading for the teacher training is in the Writing about Writing textbook published by Bedford/St Martin’s. The publisher will sent free copies of this text to all participants this summer. Any reading not included in the textbook is posted in our CourseSites composition training course.

College Algebra

Facilitator:

Access:

Faculty interested in the college algebra course should participate in the BlendKit Course (see below). Tammy Muhs will facilitate discussions on how principles in the BlendKit Course may be applied to math.

BlendKit Course

Point of Contact:

Access:

The BlendKit Course is a set of subject matter neutral, open educational resources related to blended learning available for self-study or for group use. Periodically, these materials will also be used as the basis for a facilitated open, online course. To receive information updates related to the BlendKit Course and upcoming facilitated offerings, please subscribe to the BlendKit Course Mailing List. If you have any questions, please contact Dr. Kelvin Thompson at kelvin@ucf.edu.